thatdogmagic - Tumblr blog

thatdogmagic · 1 month ago

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As before, if you don't know what's going on, and aren't up to speed on Tumblr nonsense, you are totally allowed to go do something else. It will be a much better use of your time.

So, yeah.

I know the logs going around. I know how they come off if taken at face value, from the author's 'I did nothing wrong here' point of view.

Disclaimer up front: what I'm about to say isn't excusing aggressive behaviour, or saying that everything I said is wonderful and/or justified. Even if I think HaliteaTiger et al are going out of their way to heap all their responsibility on to me, like they were just innocent babies who couldn't make decisions for themselves, I don't think anyone deserves to be in the blast radius of an autistic meltdown (required viewing), especially of the Fight variety.

Talking about that is how Haligren and I bonded, in fact. Even before I knew it was autism, we talked about our mutual issues with explosive and dissociative anger.

All this is to say, I am not going to lengthen this post even more by pausing to say, every time I defend myself, that I'm aware of my own bad behaviour. Which I know is going to rub some people the wrong way/serve as 'proof' I'm just as bad as they think, but honestly? Don't care. This post isn't for you. You've decided based on vibes-based posting and cherrypicked logs you don't like me, and that's your business. You're welcome to leave now. I haven't given you any method of knee-jerk replying to this anyway.

For everyone else, the tl;dr is this: it should strike people as odd that I am the only person taking any real responsibility for a situation so prone to blowing up (friends working together) that it regularly shows up in every sitcom known to mankind.

To me, it is the height of irony that my main detractor decided to post me saying the r-slur about myself as an indictment, when 'look at this r-slur' has been the thesis of everyone's posts ever since this started. And no, I'm sorry, they know that's exactly what they're doing.

I can say that with confidence, because each one of them was informed, very clearly, and very early on, that I, as an at-the-time 41-42 year old, was going through some serious struggles with a recent autism diagnosis. In the case of HaliteaTiger, she even ignored photographs I'd taken, physical evidence of what meltdowns could do to me in my younger years.

They know this is explicitly attached to a disability, and they're going on record saying they can't possibly believe that's the case. That I must be lying for my own benefit.

In short, that I'm too smart to be that (r-slur). I must simply be malicious, manipulative, abusive instead.

Which is exactly why the word is so easy to reach for in those moments of meltdown.

Doesn't make it right, of course-- not only should I not use the word, I should really be kinder to myself. But I have a hard time being angry with myself for repeating what people have been saying to me for pretty much my entire life, even if they're not saying it outright.

So. Let me be blunt: I am not taking responsibility for other people deciding that they can "handle me," in spite of a downpour of warnings, disclaimers, and full-blown discussions. It can only be my fault for so long that I am exactly who I say am.

What I can take responsibility for is moving too quickly. It was taking that feeling of 'oh this explains everything' that the diagnosis brought with it, and thinking that relief could translate into control. I wasn't in a rational space for how things went with HaliteaTiger - and I was as clear about that as I could have been - but in the end, I was the one who said 'yes' to working together. I was probably the one who had the idea to work together in the first place. And I genuinely thought I could handle it. Obviously, I couldn't, and I meant every apology I gave when that became evident.

(aside: since people will rightfully ask, I have footnoted why I agreed to work with Jackal/Trish in spite of saying I learned from this bad experience with Haligren; if I go into it here I'll veer off track again.)

When I say this is where my responsibilities begin and end, I'm not writing that off as a small thing. I know now that, that soon after diagnosis and reorienting my life, I was going through a kind of 'skill regression.' Whether I knew it or not - that I was effectively a loaded weapon that could go off at any time - it doesn't change the outcome. Besides that, I knew full well what I was capable of. I had years of experience telling me it was probably too soon. 'Wishful thinking,' and the myriad other reasons for poor impulse control, doesn't clear me of that. I'm not going to ask, never have asked anyone to forgive me for it, either.

That said: it is where my responsibilities begin and end.

Keep in mind, Haligren herself posted what was more or less, 'she did exactly what she said she'd do and I can't accept that maybe I had a hand in this by not bothering to listen to her. Again.'

And the same goes for Jackal, albeit to a far lesser extent. We've already covered the fables she's invented for this.

You know, I know I've said it before, but I feel like it's worth pointing out again that this is all this needed to be. 'I thought I could handle this and I couldn't' was all it needed to be, from everyone. There was and is no shame in admitting that. And admitting it to ourselves didn't need to be all bad, either. It certainly hasn't been for me.

ex: It's allowed me to set much clearer boundaries for myself and others; it's let me see a lot of weak points that need the most work; and it's allowed me to just exist more comfortably with others.

There are things outside of my control that can still trigger me, but I've gotten better at pulling back in time, and if not pulling back in time, then lessening severity. Which sucks, sometimes, because it often means pulling back from things I'd rather be doing, because they're too overstimulating. ex: I often have to stop playing flashy video games because the visuals can exacerbate any ambient tension I already have.

It's where 'ah yeah this why this is a disability' realizations come in. Having to literally lay in a dark room to get your nervous system to shut the fuck up. Which I didn't know, couldn't have guessed would be a requirement for getting my Everything to calm down, any more than I could know that certain types of treble played at higher volumes could make me start feeling panicky and fucked up. I didn't even know 'dark room + reading' would work for me until sometime this year.

With all that in mind, I've been trying to be a lot more mindful about surrounding myself with people who I know for sure know exactly what's going on. Who take it seriously, and understand that I'm still learning a lot as I go, making up for a lot of years to a point where I sometimes feel like I'm relearning how to walk, or tie my shoes. They understand that just the process of de-masking is difficult, either because they've done it or are in the process of doing it, themselves.

I will not hold it against them if they witness a meltdown and decide enough is enough. Which is part of this I don't think Haligren et al ever realized:

I don't want people around if I'm genuinely too much for them. Because, and I know this might come as a shock but, I don't want to hurt people. I never have and I never will. I don't get any kind of fulfillment out of the sound of a telephone, or some random visual overload, sending me into an absolute rage and that coming out at someone I care about. That's not cool or comfortable or fun, that's stupid. I don't get any joy or reward from that. There is nothing that has ever positively reinforced it, and until I knew what it was, every single method I could use to fix it just fell completely flat.

I've spent much of my life feeling completely hopeless about it. Which is something else Haligren and I talked about. Something she experienced herself and sympathized with (which I can say is true; funny enough, she took the reactions to some of her own random explosions and posted them as 'proof I'm just mean all the time'). I have my theories as to why I suddenly lost that sympathy - I wasn't 'fun' anymore when my struggles were real, for one - but that's for later.

Still: everything that happened between us, she already knew was possible. That it was a matter of 'when' not 'if.' That it was not me giving myself permission, it was me telling her, this is a thing I struggle with constantly, it does take a certain type of person to work this closely with me on projects I feel this strongly about.

For reasons only she can say, she decided she was that certain type of person. I did not strongarm, goad, or pressure her into that role. I did not ask 'are you sure?' in some bizarrely nuanced way that inferred she had no choice.

Example: I was in what I can recognize now as that 'pre-meltdown' state when she approached me about using Clip Studio's comics formatting. For whatever reason, I snagged on having found the tool confusing in the past and lost my fucking mind about not wanting to use it. I apologized because it was undeserved, at best random and out of nowhere.

I feel like that should have probably let her know what was going on/its severity.

I would check in (or try to check in) with her after stuff like that and I know at least once initiated the 'are you sure?' conversation about working together, if not twice, in response to not catching myself in time. Long before she let me stick my neck out publicly and announce the collab we were working on.

IDK what she thought I was saying there. With any of that. Which was another problem in and of itself but we'd be here for actual pages of text if I had to go into how many times I was willfully misinterpreted as playing 4D manipulative chess or whatever.

So, yes, to say, 'I knew it could be bad but not this bad!!' is plain bullshit. It's bullshit. She knows that. And she knows I have logs of all of it.

Here's the thing tho: I don't *want* to fucking post any logs. Not least because I don't want *my* personal business out there for everyone to see, but I frankly don't want to be known as someone who posts someone else's, esp wrt mental health. Also:

I don't want to continue a slapfight that will only lose us all friends and colleagues, and may even create fractures in the actual community.

Because, let's be clear: that's the *only* endgame here. That is the best possible outcome of all of this: we annoy our peers and our community with a mountain of shit that will only ever boil down to 'we did not work well together, for a variety of reasons, and we all got messy about it.' That is all anyone will come away with after all the logs are posted, and all the shit is slung. Because there is no tell-all beyond that. There are no juicy secrets.

If you guys ('cause I know it'll be copy/pasted to you anyway despite blocks) want to die on that hill, that's your business. I *am* genuinely sorry anyone had to sit through my meltdowns; I truly don't want to have them, ever at all for any reason, and I don't want other people around me to take the heat of them. But that's the only thing I can really apologize for beyond 'I'm sorry it didn't work out' and whatever other *actual* mistakes I made.

We all made plenty. We all lost an opportunity we wanted in each other. We all lost out on telling our own stories quicker, and on telling new ones with one another. Pointing to one of the only people willing to take any responsibility for their part, and proceeding to dump *all* responsibility on their shoulders, will not fix that. Burning me in effigy won't save you from yourselves, either, because if you can't face this, you'll have all the same problems with other people later on down the line. You just will. There's no avoiding that.

As for me, as I said, I pared down who I work with quite a bit, to people who do take me seriously, and understand - really understand - what they're signing up for. Who won't look at me saying 'I don't take hints well so please just be up front with me' and disregard it as nonsense because I'm clearly too smart for that to be a thing.

It does 1000% require being around people who are willing to talk very frankly and openly about every conflict and confrontation. Which are, it should be noted, *not* people who are pathologically driven to pat your ass and say 'it's ok it's fine' when they clearly meant something different.

...

I'm not sure anything good will come of me posting this.

When I say the posts about me have been pretty much nothing but Jackal, Trish, and Haligren saying 'look at this r-slur,' I really do mean it. People gawking and engaging are joining in to do the same. Me making this post just invites even more of that, from them and from spectators.

Nothing good has come of me staying quiet, though, so it needed to be said.

Their disbelief that I could ever be 'that bad,' their unwillingness to listen to me when I talked about my limits, when I gave clear examples of where I might need additional support... I am not taking responsibility for that disbelief, no matter how many internet randos get sicced on me. Not from Haligren and definitely not from Jackal.

So, yeah, sorry/not sorry. I know someone having a visibly 'fight' response is easy to shit on, but, nah, no. I'm not going to apologize for saying I was *owed* an apology from Haligren, either, because I was, and she knows exactly why. She's just not willing to talk about the context of that moment, because that'll take all the wind out of the 'she was abusive and lashed out for no reason!!' sails.

It'll mean taking responsibility for her part in ruining the opportunity I represented for her and her work. Which is probably an uncomfortable thought to sit with, and clearly has been for years, considering how eager she was to jump in on behalf of someone who knew ahead of time that she held a grudge.

I'm sure that'll work out well for her. I wish them well in their future collaboration. Maybe I'm wrong and absolutely none of the problems they had with me will ever surface ever again with other people ever, and everything will be fine.

ps: Going on public record to say someone who told you, more than once, 'I have no interest in you romantically' indicated they actually had a mutual crush on you is rich. 'The thought crossed my mind' =/= 'I have a crush on you too,' so we're clear. If Haligren weren't playing a game of hate-telephone with someone prone to exaggerate, she'd have known that this assumption is part of the problem I had with her.

Same w/ the constant 'I'm not into women' reminders, like I'm incapable of remembering/might fall in love with her at a moment's notice because I happen to be attracted to women and femmes. Which might just be her being awkward but like, PSA: don't do that to your queer friends, it's weird and gross to just assume that kind of thing.

Especially when, in spite of that, it felt like sometimes I was being treated as a surrogate boyfriend on an emotional level. Which is pretty much what she posted outright, so-- thanks for clarifying that for me, I guess. ;p

pps: The only reason I even considered taking a risk on working on something more intense w/ people again, re: starting up with Jackal and Trish at all, was because I got laid off from my job, had severance, and unemployment. I had a window of time I could work hard on big projects and still be pulling in income. They were both given a pretty detailed account of what had triggered them w/ Haligren and also that they had happened/would probably happen, given how new everything was.

It was still a decision I knew could easily go sideways - and tried to account for that - but took the risk anyway. I knew what I was doing, which is, yes, where I explicitly fucked up, and my way of owning that isn't something I can put on display. I can only prove it with how I act and with whom, and that's what I intend to do.

ppps: I'd say more about whatever it is Trish is going on about in all of this but she and I barely spoke personally which makes her going scorched earth honestly pretty laughable and not really worth addressing.

#admin #anyone who comes at me with bullshit from this whole mess #is just getting directed to these posts from here on out #or just blocked tbh #and that's the last I'll be saying about any of this #safe to assume btw that any vehement randos jumping in on these posts are actually jackal sockpuppets

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thatdogmagic · 2 months ago

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That whole thing in March (and July, and August, and), part 2

I'm glad most people aren't up to speed on this. I'm sorry for any confusion. I've tried to put in the basic context of a lot of this but if you're not deep-diving tumblr nonsense you're going to have missed a lot of it. If you did, just be grateful and go about your day; you have my blessing to tl;dr straight out of here.

For the people who know, and stayed: I'm addressing it now because it is demonstrably costing me, personally and professionally, to stay quiet. It hasn't risen to the point of monetary damages that require a lawyer's intervention, but if it does, I have lines out to a couple people to hire. I'm taking this seriously, which is part of why it took so much time to get around to posting.

The other reason I waited is because I had hoped interest in this would fade out/people would be able to read the posts and see them for what they are. But then the site went live, logs got involved, and Ependa (not me) received this in her discord DMs:

That is roughly when I noticed I'd been dropped by a handful mutuals, and I finally looked into what was being said about me, exactly.

I thought I'd had some idea of how bad it was, but I didn't. I was not prepared for what I actually read. I promise you: no one is. Seeing a tidal wave of outright lies about yourself and the person you love, especially when it gets that personal, and is so clearly meant to estrange and humiliate, like.

It's hard to even know where to begin. That last bit makes it particularly difficult to decide what I should actually address or talk about. As a result, this post has been written and re-written several times over the last few months, and it was only recently that I settled on anything.

What I've decided is I'll be doing my best to refrain from addressing the personal/intimate attacks, though some are unavoidable. Make no mistake: those attacks exist only to waste my time and to maximize harm. They're meant to make me engage (and probably, to some extent, drive a wedge between Ependa and I), and follow a long and sustained pattern of Jackal acting out every time she had to take 'no' for an answer.

So, fine. I'm doing this. But I'm doing it on my terms, for my sake, Ependa's sake, and for the sake of a site that I would've found a way to commission one way or another. Because I just want a place for me and my peers to post our queer werewolf art and stories, and I want to eventually help turn it into a fundraising vehicle for our various projects.

I don't care if my name is on it (it is in fact not; Werewolves Versus is not my brand, it's Angela's), I don't care if the only person to ever closely collab with me again on my own personal work is Ependa, and no one else. I don't even care if I get props for commissioning the site. I just want the thing to exist, for me and for others, and I don't want the people who use it to catch stupid accusations of 'o so ur working with the psycho transphobe??' because it happens to be in some way tied to me.

So let's start with the factual statements that can be made about the project side of this:

Jackal claim to have started a studio with myself, TrashasaurusRex, and Ependa. The reality, however, is, 'I invited people to a discord server in June-July of 2023, where a studio got talked about on voicechat but no paperwork was ever filed.

There was no studio. There was a *theoretical* studio, but nothing concrete. It didn't have a name. The *site* had a working name (the Mercantile, based on something from one of *my* stories), but that's the extent of it. The steps that would have made us an official studio had not been taken. I know, because I had to keep asking about it.

There was no attached LLC. It's referred to as 'an LLC' in posts because it does not have an actual name. I never put my signature on anything that looked even remotely like an official document. So, if an LLC does exist, and my name/signature appears on any official paperwork that's 'on record' in the state of Georgia, I mean. I don't need to be a lawyer to know there's a problem there.

Jackal claims to have liquidated the studio. That's more creative writing: there was nothing to liquidate. It's just a big word meant to make 'we deleted a discord server and some comic pages scraped together over a few months' sound official. And the server still exists in part, clearly, because it's currently being used to farm Content.

I was the one who commissioned Angela for the site and made all the arrangements. Starting out, I was the sole investor, and would have still been the primary investor once the bill was paid in full. I had also talked about buyout clauses in case we ever got around to *actual* official paperwork. Me leaving with the site was always understood to be an option on the table, in case things went sour.

I left the original idea for the studio/site ('sapphic-specific monsterfuckers') to the others. Nothing is stopping them from commissioning their own site, or building up an actual studio with an actual name under an actual LLC.

It would've been very welcome if all the vague admin work they claim to have done had actually *been* done. Unfortunately, that 'work' amounted primarily to things like being asked to find legal rep, and months later getting only so far as an answer that amounted to 'well my mom knows a lawyer who works for Disney.' That's not a part of the log that will ever get posted, though.

I am the only person in the group with a substantial 'proof of admin work' paper trail on this project. I have my own bank statements, I have the agreement with Angela, I have multiple written documents for meeting plans - many with their original save dates - and I have the paperwork I had started with a payment vendor. The most Jackal has is, allegedly, the paper trail their dad generated to withdraw/transfer the money they were going to use for their part of the investment. If there was anything else, it never got mentioned.

There was no 'gatekeeping the sitebuilder.' Angela asked that the actual, contractual business agreement be made with me exclusively to keep things simpler for her. I informed everyone of this early on. Further, no one was barred from attending my meetings with her, or reaching out to her. At any time, any one of them could have reached her using multiple methods. They knew who she was and she was not hard to find. Further, Angela was kept in the loop every step of the way, even as things started to break apart. She knew I'd be suspending payments when arguments over missed deadlines started to heat up, and I was no longer certain about the group's future. This is something she'll corroborate.

In spite of all this, Jackal and Trish were both still invited to make use of the site when it launched. That offer's obviously rescinded at this point, but I made it in good faith when I said it. It was one of the last things sent to the server and one of the few things I kept in a text file.

For anyone who made it this far into reading this (thank you for that btw), I want you to look at this list and really take it in.

If there are already this many holes in what was posted, please imagine how many holes can be punched in all the other claims being made. Especially where it comes to intimacy. I won't repeat much of it, save this: there was a whole 'Dogblud was into me and was flirting with me' thread to this, in which Jackal took great pains to mock Ependa for just standing around like a dumbass (their words) as I flirted with Jackal in front of her.

Which I shouldn't have to demonstrate is false, to anyone. I shouldn't have to say that throughout the time I was allegedly "flirting" with "my boss" (news to me that I had a 'boss,' btw, suggests I had to pay $5k for the privilege of being an employee?), I was spending the vast majority of my time with Ependa. And we talked, constantly, about everything that was happening. She always had final say on how I did/didn't behave in VC and in that server, and was in fact very much present when I had to tell Jackal I would not engage in on-site ERP, silly or serious, without Ependa's approval or say-so. It is not my fault Jackal chose not to hear that.

They *did*, however, hear me talk about how Ependa and I expressed ourselves with each other. Heard me say that we use Phoebe and Lacey as proxies sometimes, understanding that they're not literally projections of ourselves, just characters with some significance to how we became a couple. In the posts they made about my conduct, by their own admission, they chose to remove that from its proper context, and superimpose it on to the professional arrangement we made with each other to write/draw sapphic comics with our respective characters.

Like, that was the whole premise of the site, sapphic monsterfucking; we had long discussed using the 'star power' of our characters to sell it, since our audiences had an investment. The note about Phoebe and Lacey was quite literally the backbone of the rule we had for porn scenarios depicting them, re: 'never one without the other,' so it's weird to see that turned around to prove there was rampant flirting on my end.

Aside, but, that Jackal has to paint herself as the boss in the situation is interesting. Because-- and I'm not rearranging what she's saying here, or remixing it, I'm taking at face value what's being implied.

Her being the boss implies that Ependa and I agreed to an 'employer/employee' relationship with terms that were never discussed with us. Primarily, that any discussion of 'we will be talking about our characters fucking/fucking around one another/(the usual porn comic nonsense goes here)' would be interpreted as flirtation, when that was literally part of the job we were signing up for. That we were, in fact, being weirdly entrapped?? in more of an intimate relationship with this person than a working 'we are collaborating on a project' relationship.

I'm not pointing this out to be dramatic, or raise additional allegations. The vibe was meant to be loose because of the type of business we were talking about. I'm pointing this out to say that Jackal's lies are pervasive enough to self-contradict, often, about *a lot* of things, even to the point of painting themselves in an even more unflattering light than I ever could.

So, no, if she chooses to keep this going, I'm not going to waste my time swatting down every little thing she has said, or will say; I won't go out of my way to give proof of each and every lie being false, or give my side of the story each and every time some piece of the log has been stitched together to prove with 1000% certainty that I kill babies with slingshots or whatever else it is that's being said about me on any given day.

...

All this, because they took it really personally that I tried to move on with the investment I made, with money I earned over ten years of working full time on a 12a-8a shift, holidays included.

I shouldn't have to say this, but I don't owe that investment to anyone, least of all someone with whom I was fundamentally incompatible, on a working level, and with whom no formal agreement was ever signed.

I don't owe Jackal the keys to that site because she invited me to a discord server one day. I don't owe it to Jackal to drop the site entirely, and wave goodbye to $5k of a meager life savings, simply because we followed in the footsteps of so many other artists: ruining our entire friendship by trying and failing to work together on a professional level, without necessary guard rails, because we were arrogant enough to think 'with us, it'll be different!'

It's the same story with HaliteaTiger, at the end of the day.

Yes, I will be addressing the logs, and yes, I do own what I said. I'm not going to pretend that wasn't me or that what I said was appropriate or excusable. But I will say that the story presented is very conveniently slanted, ignoring nearly 3000 pages of ongoing context. Which did happen to include many, many discussions about where I was at in terms of aggressive meltdowns, with everyone involved, long before we ever worked together. I never lied to anyone about that, or hold it against them if it turns out to be too much.

End of the day, they were just as keen as I was to willfully ignore all the warning signs, spoken and unspoken. That the fit wasn't right, that this thing or that thing was *off*, that this was already showing signs of faltering because (xyz thing).

Which is really the thesis of this story. It's going to keep being the thesis by the time I'm done writing all of it out. Everyone involved, myself included, was so caught up in the opportunity we all saw in each other that we all mutually ignored multiple red flags, and got burned by that. As is often the case.

The finer points of all that are for another post. This one, I'd prefer to keep more or less contained.

#admin #Im sorry this is so long #but it was kind of inevitable #and just like that 'incapable of taking no for an answer' continues to be the going theme

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